Amazon is coughing up a whopping $13.7 billion in cash to acquire Whole Foods Market.

The two companies will merge but Whole Foods stores will continue to operate independently, with co-founder John Mackey retaining his role as CEO. The move instantly gives Amazon almost as many stores as Apple.

More tech giants are joining Apple in the consortium bidding to acquire Toshiba’s semiconductor business.

Led by Foxconn, other companies involved in the potential bid include Dell, Google, Microsoft and Cisco. Amazon is also reportedly considering joining.

Apple is giving iPhone retailers in India permission to slash prices in a bid to boost sales.

Even the company’s older handsets are still too expensive for the vast majority of local consumers, and sales are suffering as a result. Apple has no choice but to cut prices if it wants to be successful in one of the world’s fastest-growing smartphone markets.

After helping unveil Apple’s huge software updates and new hardware lineup, Apple CEO Tim Cook sat down for a post-keynote interview where he discussed topics like the new HomePod and President Donald Trump.

Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou has confirmed that Apple will help it in its bid to buy Toshiba’s semiconductor business — and it’ll be getting a helping hand from Amazon, too.

Amazon Alexa now plays nicely with your iCloud calendar.

Once the two are linked, you can ask Alexa to check your schedule for the day, add appointments using your voice, and more.

Google brought its Google Assistant to iOS this week, finally giving iPhone fans a taste of the best virtual assistant on the planet. But those on Android are in for so much more, with major improvements on the way, including impressive Google Lens integration.

The changes make it harder than ever for Siri to catch up. Despite the improvements Apple made with iOS 10, it still feels like Siri is well behind its rivals. Is that gap now too big, or can Apple catch up? Will Siri ever be as good as the Google Assistant?

Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight as we wage war over virtual assistants.

This week, on The CultCast: new MacBook Pros at WWDC? Insiders say yes! We’ll tell you all we know. Plus: why future Macs might get much faster CPUs; Apple makes a big move to bring manufacturing back to the US; and we’ll wrap up with 5 weird and whacky facts about the new Apple Park campus.

Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. It’s simple to accept Apple Pay and sell your wares with your very own Squarespace.com website. Enter offer code CultCast at checkout to get 10% off any hosting plan.